Zhou Chunya

signed in Chinese and Pinyin and dated 1997, framed

Galerie Loft, Paris and Hong Kong
The Ullens Collection
Poly Auction, Beijing, 2 June, 2011, lot 819
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

USA, San Francisco, LIMN Gallery, East Meets East in the West, 12 March - 30 April, 1998, unpaginated

Christine Buci-Glucksmann ed., Modernites Chinoises, Skira Editore, Milan, Italy, 2003, p. 95

This work is generally in good condition. There are minor soiling around the corners and gentle stretcher marks visible across the surface. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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The Inaugural work in the Green Dog series
Zhou Chunya

Created in 1997, Lovers Under the Moon (Green Dog No. 2) (Lot 1066) was one of the first five paintings in Zhou Chunya’s Green Dog series. Although the artist would return to this subject many times afterwards, the early Green Dog works maintain a high degree of uniqueness in their figural style, brushwork, and composition. They are not simple symbols but embodiments of Zhou Chunya’s profound emotions. While more realistically rendered, the early works are also more emotionally explicit, recalling Zhou’s expressionist projection of otherwise repressed desires onto his canvases. The figure in the background of Lovers Under the Moon (Green Dog No. 2) also anticipates the naked bodies in his later Peach Blossom Series.

Zhou Chunya is, in essence, a deeply traditional artist, possessing in him traits stemming from a coterie of literati, all thanks to the profound impact of his intellectual family. His father was a literary critic; his mother the party leader of a music high school. Despite tragically and prematurely passing away, Zhou’s father left behind a trove of both local and foreign literary theoretical works, including Zhang Daqian’s originals, all of which became a legacy that would intensely affect the artist and his work. When the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts reopened in 1977, Zhou was immediately accepted and enrolled at the institution. This gave him the opportunity to immerse himself in deeper studies of Western Art, even though this was only confined to classical, realist and impressionist works at the time.

Zhou’s fame descended upon him very early on, in spite of his isolation away from trends. In 1980, when his fellow classmates at the Academy were painting with humanitarian hearts and social realist hands, depicting the throes of the Cultural Revolution, the then twenty-five year old Zhou Chunya chose instead to head towards Tibet, creating The New Generation of Tibetans. With this, he participated at the second National Art Exhibition, earning second place for his aforementioned work, coming after the winning piece Father by Luo Zhongli. When asked why he did not instead join the "Scar Art" movement, Zhou responded, "At the time I too attempted a series of narrative paintings on the topic of scar art, but I abandoned drawing them; perhaps it’s because I couldn’t insert myself into such a complex mode of thinking. Back then, I wanted to sketch from nature, because through sketching I was confronting it in all its glory; in all its flesh and blood, thus letting flow the emotional excitement I had trapped in me, through art."¹

When the 1985 artistic New Wave was in full swing in mainland China, Zhou chose instead to turn to Germany, attending the Academy of Fine Arts, in Kassel, in 1986. While there, he witnessed the peak of Neo-Expressionism. It was also while in Kassel, that an unassuming classical Chinese song roused nostalgia for the traditional culture of China. In January 1989, Zhou returned home, mentioning once, "In fact I did have plans. However, when I came back in 1989, I felt like my life was filled with contradictions. Li Xianting put on a modern Chinese art exhibition in Beijing that year, and there I was, living in Li’s office. He was extremely busy, and so I took the train to head back to Sichuan. I noted at the time, while passing Qinling, that all the Southwestern artists were all taking the train, heading to Beijing. It seemed as if I had mixed up my timings. I came back, and was delving into the likes of Bada Shanren, Huang Binhong…"²

On the surface, it seems like Zhou Chunya brushed shoulders and parted with the fervent, self-expressive mode of 1985. However this is not necessarily the case. In fact, Zhou had long cultivated both knowledge and experience of such things as installation, performance, video and photography, and in those days believed those to be the true language of inner-expression. In comparison to the highly stylised training he had received at college, his heart was ablaze with genuine emotion. He did not imitate artistic language of any kind, rather, sought to converse solely through authentic expressions, taken from the recesses of his own yearning heart. After returning home, he devoted himself entirely to studying the meaning and implications of traditional Chinese painters, such as Wang Meng, Bada Shanren, Huang Binhong. Their styles deeply fascinated him, and through a study of their artistic creations, he too glimpsed the possibility of expressing his own complex scholarly inclinations.

Critic Yin Shuangxi believes that Zhou’s pre-1986 creations were dominated by the theme of "life’s pristine, personal memories and uninhibited expression"³. If one assumes this, believing that the artist used the early eighties to explore his own personal style, to construct his own inner world, then this sensibility, cultivated just after leaving Germany, is particularly evident and no better seen than in his Green Dog series. In 1992, Zhou Chunya embarked on a journey to establish his own symbols. According to his own summations, the Stone series was the first stage in this exploration. He chose “Rocks of Taihu” as a guiding title, using Western painting media and techniques to express this quintessentially Chinese historical symbol, so filled with the Chinese spirit. The second stage of the aforesaid exploration was his Green Dog series.

In 1993, Zhou Chunya adopted a small German Shepherd from his friend’s house, and named him “Black Root” (Heigen). Because large dogs were prohibited in Chinese cities in the early nineties, Zhou had to keep Black Root at home, thus developing a close bond between dog and owner. As they spent more time with one another, gradually growing more familiar, Zhou regarded the dog as family and confidant, as an integral part of his life. He passionately recalled, “Black Root was very naughty, energetic, pouncing here and there to play with the family. In those days I lived with my ex-wife Zhang Xi, and because we did not have any children, we started calling Black Root our son.”⁴

Black Root originally appeared in Zhou’s works as he does in real life: black fur, displaying typical canine movements and properties, with most depictions executed in sketch. From 1997 onwards, Black Root was painted green. The iconic green dog was attractive partly due to its impossibility, its departure from reality; partly due to the boldness of its green colour and its strong visual impact.

The 1997 Lovers Under the Moon (Green Dog No. 2) is part of Zhou Chunya’s five-piece Green Dog series. The emerald Black Root is upright on his hind legs, his muscles clenched, with his mouth wide open, revealing two rows of sharp teeth. Accompanying this vibrantly green dog is an ashen background of a grey cityscape and fading sketches of people. Black Root is the dominant figure in the painting, taking centre stage: an indomitable spirit among a sea of people and a city. When compared with the green dog, the accompanying figures are almost shapeless, appearing distorted, artificial and faceless. In contrast, Black Root exudes a natural beauty—of a primitive sort—a beauty that humans are incapable of emanating. Zhou Chunya explained, “The green dog is an emblem, a symbol…green represents a quiet, romantic and lyrical expression, it is portentous, symbolic of the lull before the storm.”⁵

The answer to the question of what the green dog is specifically a symbol of, is manifold. It may be a symbol of the vague, ambiguous relationship between people; it may be a projection of the reality of the artist’s living conditions. Perhaps what may be revealing, then, is the fact that Zhou Chunya deals with the theme of “Green Dog” in a manner not unlike that of traditional Chinese literati art. In these paintings, mountains, flowers and birds are all very typical and stylised symbols, and are usually deployed by the painter to represent the ideal world of their hearts. The reconstructed and borrowed material is deployed in order to represent the painter’s own feelings, repeatedly exploring the delicate and ever-changing charms of the language of painting.

1 Liu Chun,“Concept is More Important than Craft“, Art. Life. Tred: A Dialogue with Forty One Chinese Contemporary Artists, Yunnan People’s Publishing House 2003
2 Xu Lianlian,“The seven misunderstanding to Contemporary Chinese Art,” News Weekly, 2011
3 Yin Shuangxi, “Purifying Passion”, Northwest Art, 1996
4 “Zhou Chunya: That Dog Called Black Root Helped me Evolve”, Art World, 2011
5 Jonathan Goodman, “East Meets West: Interpreting Zhou Chunya”, Art World, 2001